


would you kill for another morning?

by sunflower_8



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Character Death, Closure, Complicated Relationships, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Literary References & Allusions, Mental Instability, Mild Gore, Multi, Past Abuse, Past Violence, Psychological Trauma, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Therapy, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:56:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28739121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflower_8/pseuds/sunflower_8
Summary: Life is such a lonely goddamn place.He smiles every day, though. He wakes up with a smile, showers with a smile, cooks breakfast with a smile, throws his breakfast in the trash with a smile, takes a walk with a smile, almost gets hit by a car with a smile, gives everything up and goes to bed again with a smile. Everything is a bit more lonely with a smile, but at least he doesn’t smile with his teeth.He thinks he’d rather die.(komaeda's nonlinear, and tentatively unreliable, journey as he pieces together all that happened in his past, one fragment at a time. or; sometimes, closure is a hushed confession at the sight of your end.)
Relationships: Enoshima Junko/Komaeda Nagito (past), Hinata Hajime & Komaeda Nagito, Hinata Hajime/Komaeda Nagito
Comments: 17
Kudos: 100





	would you kill for another morning?

Komaeda burns his wrist.

An accident, he tells himself. A little too curious, drawn a little too close to the stove. He had only wanted to boil some water to make himself a cup of tea, and he had rested his wrist too close to the blue-flamed fire. An accident. 

There are other ways to boil water. His mind chides at him--  _ plenty of other ways to boil water. You don’t have to stick to tradition so closely, you were so content to leave it at the front step, beaten and bloodied. It doesn’t matter how you make your tea, so long as you don’t burn your wrist, because burnt wrists lead to questions as to why you boiled your water like that. _

He’s fine with questions, really. He has another call at seven, after all, and evading the questions only leaves space for more;  _ you can’t build a castle if you can’t cross the walls. _ He hates fairytales quite a lot, actually, but a castle might be nice. One with a fireplace and hot coals, one with a well to take a pail to the water, one with water to boil.

It’s twenty past seven.

He leaves the stove on as he dials. The house almost burns down. He doesn’t drink tea for a few more months. 

_ And why is that? _

\--

_ Komaeda Nagito. Twenty two years old. Lives alone. No living relatives.  _

Life is such a lonely goddamn place.

He smiles every day, though. He wakes up with a smile, showers with a smile, cooks breakfast with a smile, throws his breakfast in the trash with a smile, takes a walk with a smile, almost gets hit by a car with a smile, gives everything up and goes to bed again with a smile. Everything is a bit more lonely with a smile, but at least he doesn’t smile with his teeth. 

He thinks he’d rather die. 

His days aren’t always so cut and dry, though, that’s an assumption one shouldn’t make. They’re often exciting, filled with unpredictable spouts of bad luck and sometimes, sometimes, another person will visit. Most people visit only for a night, though-- they don’t like how clean his house is. He doesn’t really like knick-knacks, though, he always cuts his fingers on them. 

_ “Why do you cut your fingers on them?” _

_ “I just had to feel it, I think. It’s scary, not to know something, isn’t it?” _

_ “But why did you have to bleed?” _

_ “I don’t know. I… I don’t know.” _

He likes having guests, though. Nanami Chiaki comes around sometimes, brings over handheld devices and only puffs her cheeks when he declines, listening to him do the laundry as she plays another session. She’s gotten busier, though, off on a trip with her girlfriend Sonia Nevermind, so he doesn’t quite see her often but he never minds. 

There is also Kuzuryuu Fuyuhiko and Souda Kazuichi. Two that also come as a pair, for no explicable reason, and are the most likely to attempt to pry Komaeda out of his so-called isolation. After enough arguments where Komaeda raised the point  _ it’s not isolation if someone comes around _ , they stopped arriving.

Komaeda isn’t particularly pressed, though. He didn’t have a lot of similarities with those two. With anything.

His favorite guest, by far, and the most persistent one, is Hinata Hajime. He’s in love with him, deeply and truly, forever in hapless accidents, so it really is quite nice to have him around. When he’s gone, Komaeda sometimes misses him. He sets out an extra cup of tea for the next three days after, enough to cope with the stages of grief that come from losing your tether to reality.

Quite a mouthful of a thought. Komaeda likes tongue twisters.

In any case, his days can be quite exciting, if a bit isolating. He has no place to mind, though. He had wanted to be alone for a very, very long time, especially after what he did. 

_ “And what is it that you did?” _

_ “I don’t know if I can say. I apologize.” _

_ “You have nothing to apologize for. Though, may I ask if it is something you are unable to say, or something you have chosen not to.” _

_ “The latter. I have no reserves. You could kill me if you wanted to, I don’t adhere to the conventional. This is all confidential, isn’t it? It would be rather unfortunate if someone were to know-- but maybe they wouldn’t believe you! Haha, what a thought! After years of being drawn away, I am just a fairytale caricature! Oh, I loathe fairytales, have I told you that? Though a castle might be nice. One with ivy and stone and large beds. I don’t like large beds, though. They make me feel rather alone. But that reminds me, Hinata-kun is coming over tomorrow! Do you think it’ll be the last time? I hope not, I really did want to kiss him someday. But after everything I’ve done, I think he’d just taste blood.” _

_ “Komaeda-san, would you like to try breathing to a metronome?” _

\--

Komaeda used to live in the city.

That’s a given, really, so it’s hardly pertinent to state it. He had been a student at a prestigious academy, where he had met most of his acquaintances. Of course, he had left the city on the last day of the final term to move into the house he now lives in-- albeit, there had been a bit of a gap, so he was quite lost for a while, without a home. 

This isn’t exactly his home, either. He had found it abandoned a little off the road and claimed it as his living place. Aside from the occasional manipulative mice and the water leakage that makes him scream and panic, he is rather fond of it.

He does not miss the city. There’s not a lot to miss with it, really. It was loud, with glaring lights and atmospheric chatter, slipping past his ears and cluttering his mind until he could hardly form a word. Avoidance hadn’t helped with that; every day out was another week in until he only went outside to visit the river again.

The river had been rather nice. Several generations of people had died in it, and yet, it never dried up. 

It’s not the prettiest place to die, for the river is contaminated by the abundance of hollow bones and old cigarettes, with the shore showing histories of couples and friends who would come to huddle under the moon’s swell. Nonetheless, Komaeda had wanted to die there. 

He still wishes for that. 

_ “Do you think I’m a liar?” _

_ “I don’t believe you are, Komaeda-san.” _

_ “That’s a lot of faith to put in me. I’ve lied to a lot of people.” _

_ “Who?” _

_ “My friends. The stars. The kettle. The floorboards. My hands. My fingertips. Myself. I’ve lied quite a lot, haven’t I? It’s so, so very fun. It makes everything feel as if you are hyperventilating, blurred and high up. I used to hyperventilate with a kid when I was younger. We could never do it quite right. I wish he had lived long enough for me to teach him how to do it properly.” _

_ “Why do you lie, Komaeda-san?” _

_ “For him.” _

_ “What was his name?” _

_ “Are you even certain he existed?” _

_ “Would you have lied about that story, Komaeda-san?” _

_ “I told him hyperventilation was like soaring. An accidental lie. I do that quite a lot.” _

_ “You hadn’t known much better.” _

_ “I’m lying to you right now. There are many horrible things I haven’t told you.” _

_ “Then tell me.” _

_ “I used to like fantastical bedtime stories. I would read them to myself every night. But slowly, they became a little less funny. I didn’t want to read about sleeping beauty after having been asleep for… days, I believe. The world had started knocking on my door, by then. I didn’t want to read about the mice when I could hear them scuttling about the rooms. I didn’t want to read about true love’s kiss when the last time I had been kissed, I had-” _

_ “... You had?” _

_ “I don’t like fairytales. Don’t make me read any.” _

_ “I won’t.” _

_ “You won’t.” _

\--

Hinata and him talk about quite a lot of things, when the former comes over.

They are simple enough matters.  _ How is everything going? How are your parents? I brought you something from our hometown. It’s really clean in here, huh? I miss you.  _

They are easy to escalate, and over time they seldom don’t. Silent gazes and quick asides-- Komaeda knows the true intent of their talks.  _ Have you been seeing the doctor? Why did you switch out of your parents’ chosen major? Is the river still there? Why are you cleaning so much, you’re going to drown in peroxide. I miss you so bad I can’t breathe. _

Hinata is always polite, though. Well, in a sense, he can be rather crass. However, he doesn’t often press too hard; he doesn’t like to make Komaeda upset. He manages to anyway, considering the few times Komaeda has cried in front of him and the screaming matches they have had, but he still chooses to come around all the same.

Maybe it’s only a courtesy. Hinata knows what happened, after all. Maybe he knows it will happen once more, if Komaeda is left alone for too long. Maybe Hinata’s gotten his sleeves too wet on far too many accounts, that he doesn’t want to go searching again. Maybe all he desires of the other is for him to not disappear again.

Is it disappearing, Komaeda wonders, if one has a phone and a public address?

It’s about the sentiment, Hinata had told him. 

Komaeda is rather awful with sentiments. He forgets to make Hinata tea, sometimes. Hinata never seems to mind, waving off the apologies, directing the attention on Komaeda’s faulty memory. Sometimes, Hinata talks like he really, truly expects Komaeda to die. It’s a macabre sort of hilarity. Even after all these years, he has hope. How characteristically considerate of him.

_ “You have an exceptional memory of your conversations with Hinata-san, Komaeda-san. It’s really helpful to have that, when we’re discussing events such as these.” _

_ “I write them all down. I think when I die, I’ll give Hinata-kun the notebook. Of all our conversations according to what I can remember. I can imagine the expressions he’ll make. He’s very pretty, have I told you that? Hazel-green eyes, spiky brown hair, not athletic yet capable, freckled tan skin. He looks like a painting. Maybe I should pick up painting.” _

_ “It may be a good hobby to have, Komaeda-san. It’s cathartic to release your emotions through art.” _

_ “Yes, yes. I used to know piano too. I was actually rather good at it. One day, though, I got overwhelmed-- it was a lot of noise, and the music sheets suddenly didn’t make much sense-- that I slammed my head into the keys and passed out. When I woke up, there was a little bit of blood on the middle C key. I didn’t get a concussion, though, only a few bruises.” _

_ “Hm.” _

_ “Sometimes, I say things, and I don’t know who I am.”  _

_ “Does the piano memory make you feel like someone else?” _

_ “I don’t know. I don’t know, I don’t know. I… I don’t know.” _

\--

He has a nightmare, once, when Hinata’s around.

It’s not a nightmare, he thinks, just a memory. Or maybe memories are nightmares?  _ You deserve to have them nonetheless.  _

His nightmares wake him up screaming and clawing. It’s fortunate that the guest bedroom is close enough that Hinata can hear him. Otherwise, he doesn’t quite want to imagine the corpse Hinata will have to bear witness to-- a clawed-out throat and a torn-into chest.

Hinata comes and, as principle, tears his hands away from his neck and pins him down. Komaeda almost wants to make a joke, but finds it ill-fated, sobbing against the pillow as Hinata stares down. The tears end up crystallizing and falling away, leaving Komaeda in a delirious state of unknowing, never certain where he is or who he has become, only faded figures that lurk in the back of his mind. He remembers-- clearly and distinctly, he remembers-- all that happened years ago, but nothing of what exists now. He can only ever hear the words of dead people, like this, and all the horrific acts he has committed. 

This is not the first time Hinata has been positioned like this, drawing him out of suffocation and panic. Komaeda wonders when he will give up.

_ “Did you ever get closure, Komaeda-san?” _

_ “From what?” _

_ “What had happened. What Hinata-san did. What you, yourself, did.”  _

_ “No. I don’t want anyone to know about that.” _

_ “Doesn’t Hinata-san already know?” _

_ “He was there. But I never told him why I did it. I never told anybody. I was content to just take off and never speak to him again. It’s not my fault that he came back, over and over, trying to save me.” _

_ “Do you want to be saved, Komaeda-san?” _

_ “God no.” _

_ “Do you think you can be saved?” _

_ “I’d pity the person who tries. If I could be saved, then despair has won over everything.” _

_ “You mention despair a lot. Mind telling me some about that?” _

_ “You don’t want to know.” _

When Komaeda’s breathing steadies, everything around him is still convoluted. Hinata remains there, stationary, until Komaeda quietly asks, “Where am I?”

“Your house.” And Hinata is tired.

“The one I stole. After I did it.”

“Yeah.”

“... Why are you here, Hinata-kun?”

“I don’t fucking know, at this point. I just keep coming back, I guess. You make nice company even when you scare the shit out of me. I just wish you could explain everything instead of hiding it. You’re only hurting yourself and frustrating everyone else.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I was there, Komaeda. I saw you do it. I chased you down. I pulled you out of the river. I drove you home. I came over to find you in the morning. I called when nobody had seen you. I took it to the academy. I fought when they shut the case down instantly. I thought you were dead. I was relieved when they found you. And I’ve come over every other week since. And still, still you won’t tell me why you did it.”

“If you know so much, isn’t it obvious, Hinata-kun? Use that brilliant brain of yours, it can’t be hard.”

“I thought you loved her. You told me, once, that she taught you how to love. That she took something you couldn’t take back, and never would have wanted to. That with every passing day, the world seemed a little bit brighter, that everything was so good for the two of you.”

“I was lying, Hinata-kun. Through my teeth. I turned my bruises into artwork. I said that I liked the pain. I took every piece of what she did to me and convinced myself that she was sacred. That I was so lucky to have her. She meant everything to me because she hurt me, but when she hurt me, I had thought it was idyllic. Until one day, but you know that part.”

“Why did you do it like that? If you had hated her, why didn’t you just tell someone? We could have done something. You didn’t have to…”

“I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t. She called me beautiful and I did it.”

“Komaeda…”

“Go back to bed, Hinata-kun.”

“I’m not leaving you alone.”

“Then sleep next to me. Please.”

“Fine.” And Hinata is tired.

_ “I can’t make tea any other way, anymore.” _

_ “And why is that?” _

_ “It tastes like blood, sometimes. I gag on it. If it isn’t boiled on the stove.” _

_ “You may be linking the process of making tea to your past trauma.” _

_ “Maybe. It just makes me feel so sick. I keep burning myself and almost burning the house down and I have to stop drinking tea for months after that, but I can’t make it any other way. I’ve tried. It tastes so strongly of her. I feel sick.” _

_ “What do you mean by that?” _

_ “Huh?” _

_ “‘It tastes so strongly of her.’” _

_ “I think I’m going to throw up. That’s what I meant.” _

_ “Do you want to breathe to the metronome?” _

_ “It’s so bitter. She didn’t even like tea. I just can’t eat or drink anything without doing it a certain way, or I think about her, and what I did to her, and everything. I’m unhinged. I’ve been alone for so long that I’ve lost my mind. How could I do that to her? Who gave me, something so vile and animalistic, a monster, the right to do that to her? It was so bloody. I feel so sick.” _

_ “Breathe.” _

_ “I wish it was me.” _

\--

Komaeda wakes up with a chest to his back. 

He curls his fingers in Hinata’s, waits for an exhale before asking, “Do you love me?”

“No.” Hinata replies, and Komaeda can only think,  _ how wonderful.  _ “I don’t think it’d be right. We’ve been through too much shit to handle that well. Whether I want to love you or not, it’s just not a good time.”

“Ever so wise.”

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot, lately.”

“Ah. Hey, Hinata-kun?”

“Mm?”

“Even if you don’t love me, can you stay? Just for a bit?”

“Yeah.”

It is as simple as that. Komaeda wonders if he despises him. 

They lay in the bed like that for hours. Far too long, really, but there is not much to do within the day. Komaeda does not want to drink tea, nor does he quite want to make breakfast, nor does he want to take a walk, shower, even clean. And Hinata has been whittled to a husk of curiosity, the worst husk one could be, wanting to understand Komaeda when he hardly feels like himself. And it’s so, so hard.

Life is such a lonely goddamn place. Komaeda turns around to rest his cheek on Hinata’s chest. There are a few scars across his bare skin, and Komaeda wants to trace them, ask  _ why are they there?  _ but he refrains. From the latter, that is-- his hand still touches them, following their paths even when Hinata complains at how cold he is, driven by the want to know someone so keenly.

Komaeda has never felt like this in his life.

They rest until Hinata gets up abruptly, checking his watch and saying that he has somewhere else to be. Komaeda watches him get up with bleary eyes, just barely coherent enough to register the steps: Hinata finds his shirt, covers up the scars, runs his hand through Komaeda’s hair, and grabs a cup of tea on his way out. All the tea bags are for him, now. He does not know.

He must have been cruel, to include the third step.

Even at his side, it is so, so lonely. Komaeda feels a fever he will never be able to break. He falls back asleep.

_ “I want to kill myself.” _

_ “Why?” _

_ “I don’t know. I wake up, sometimes, and it’s four am, and my eyes still burn quite a lot. I make myself tea and burn myself on the stove, taking one sip before pouring the rest down the sink, having an apple and not knowing if it is going to kill me or not, like the fairytales. Or which would be for the better. I take walks, but I don’t know where I’m going. I’ve lived here ever since… well, three years. I still don’t know what’s around me. I take walks, but I can’t seem to keep my eyes off the pavement, even when the world around me is beautiful. And it’s rather loud, isn’t it? The chirping of birds, the cars in the background, the strangers in the foreground? I start speaking to myself, but I don’t sound like myself. When I was in high school, I used to have pointed statements. The words had meant something, calculated and clever. I can’t get these words to mean anything, now. And I come home, eventually, and choke on water in the shower, and I spit out shampoo I tried to drink on purpose, and everything burns for a few minutes. I go back to the kitchen, I watch the clock tick by for hours, I realize that the fake plant I got is wilting, like the paint is smearing off. And I sit on the counter, and I’m paying such close attention, and I think about hope and despair and how this is neither, and as I sit there. I want to kill myself.” _

_ “Oh.” _

\--

There is a book on Komaeda’s shelf containing the photos of everyone who attended his high school.

He opens it, sometimes. There are scrawled signatures on the first page, written hastily by people he knew. Some are polite and expectable, several  _ have a wonderful break _ s, while others are more sardonic and comical. The amount of people who signed the book were lower than other students, he knows, but he doesn’t particularly mind.

There are pages about the history of the school, the staff, everything: and then, photos of every student.

Sometimes, he sits on his front step, and he flips through every page. He talks about it in the appointments, on occasion. The photos of all his beloved ex-classmates, smiling at the camera.  _ I can see the lenses in their irises.  _

He has threatened to tear the book apart.

He has yet to act.

_ “That’s Hinata-san, correct?” _

_ “Mhm. He’s rather charming, isn’t he? If you look up a bit, you can see Nanami-san. She’s rather soft-hearted, our class representative. She was always very dedicated to us.” _

_ “I see. Did you get along with them?” _

_ “They tried. I was not the easiest to get along with, but Nanami-san never ceased to try. And Hinata-kun always… made quite an effort. He still does. They both do, but especially him.” _

_ “I see.” _

_ “On another page, there’s a picture of her. But I don’t know if I should look at it, right now.” _

_ “Can I ask who ‘her’ is?” _

_ “... Nevermind. Here is a photo of me.” _

It’s odd, to reminisce on those memories. He used to watch Nanami and Hinata play video games, occasionally, on handheld consoles near a fountain. He would listen to his classmates squabble with a smile, eat the desserts his peer made despite disliking sweets. He would talk to the professors, sometimes, about the subjects they taught. He used to go on for hours in class debates, literature or history or chemistry. 

He had been rather bright, once. A good classmate, yet an isolated one. 

Hinata and Nanami brought him into the light, in some ways. Forced his hand in interacting with those around him, even if he hadn’t gotten along with Hinata for the longest time.

And on the other side of him, someone else had attempted to break through his social walls. And, as history dictates, she succeeded. For a very, very long time. She tore into his castle, left scratches on the stone furnace, poured the boiling kettle over his head as if it was a goodbye. With every pull, she ripped out the flowers, splintered the wooden doors, crumbled every stone tower. She destroyed his solitary kingdom with sweetened words, regrew nightshade in the garden, poured mercury in the cracked floorboards, covered the master quarters in thorns. 

With a broken castle and a panicked body, she called him into the courtyard. And with dirtied claws and burning teeth, he ripped her apart.

_ “May I ask a question about the event?” _

_ “I’m fine with questions.” _

_ “Did you mean it literally? Using your teeth to…” _

_ “Yes.” _

_ “I see.” _

_ “I didn’t have a thought. Anything to dissuade me. It’s a miracle I’ve avoided a court case. Pure luck, maybe. I would have thought the news had heard it.” _

_ “... Mm.” _

_ “What is it?” _

_ “Nothing, sorry. I was just thinking. You’re free to discuss whatever you’d like, Komaeda-san.” _

\--

It takes Komaeda a month before his birthday, a fresh March, before he speaks.

He is sitting across from Hinata when he does, a cup of bitter wine in his hands, something that will surely upset his medicine. If he is taking medicine. Sometimes, he forgets when there’s nobody shoving it down his throat.

Hinata doesn’t say a word. He drinks slowly, breathes slowly, thinks slowly. Or, well, that’s a lie. He’s a very quick person, just sometimes slow-- it takes a few seconds to process complicated things, but a lifetime to remember the basics. It takes somewhere in between to piece it all together. Which is why, on this occasion, Komaeda is inclined to help.

“I killed her,” is how he starts, sudden and nonchalant.

Hinata looks at him. His eyes are tired. “I know you did.”

“I killed her because she called me beautiful. After everything she had done to me, it overcame me. I was across from her, she was fixing my collar, and suddenly my teeth were in her neck and my fingernails were in her skin. It was something so primal. She used to call me her pet, her beast. Some monster she had to control.”

“She abused you, didn’t she?” Hinata asks softly. “And we didn’t do anything to stop it.”

“I hadn’t known she did for the longest time. I thought she was my hope, and I was her despair-- she had told me as much. One has to triumph the other. I let it be her.”

“Komaeda…”

His eyes sting, lightly. “I ran off after I did it. I left a corpse in the courtyard. I ran and ran until I came to the river, and I threw myself and my bloodstained clothes into the water. I held my breath and sank, hoping that I would die there. I wanted to die there, Hinata-kun, because I didn’t know how to live with anything else.”

“But I found you.” 

“You saw it happen, didn’t you?”

“I did.” Hinata sighs, voice strained. “The school held the case under lock and key. Nobody else was to know about it. Rumors spread, but it was March, and school was ending so soon… our class was already set to graduate. So it was only hearsay for a while.”

“If I had the chance to go back, I would do it again. I would have killed her. I would have ran to the river. I would have drowned myself, only to be pulled up by you.” He gets up, pours the wine down the sink, and his elbows buckle. He leans against the countertop until Hinata wraps his arms around his waist, hoisting him like he had all those years ago. “Not out of desire to reach the same conclusion I’m at now. I just know that I had to.”

“There was so much blood, Komaeda.”

“I know. I have so many nightmares. I can’t drink tea or eat much, anymore. I think of her so often. I wonder why I see her everywhere. Sometimes, it hits me what I did, and I wish I could have ended myself instead. That she had truly won. That it had been me, with red on my throat and a scratchy scream.”

Hinata breathes carefully. “That’s horrifying.”

“It’s what I deserve.”

“You deserve to heal, Komaeda.”

“Then despair would have won.”

“You’re not hers anymore.” Komaeda laughs at that, but Hinata holds him tighter. “You aren’t. You aren’t despair or hope or all that bullshit. You’re a person. A person who killed someone because they had hurt you really, really fucking badly. You’re a person.” And Komaeda thinks,  _ what would it take to be a person you love? Maybe too much.  _ “You have a doctor, don’t you? Somewhere to get this out?”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Then let me help you.” Hinata turns him around, grabs his chin with one hand and looks him in the eye, and Komaeda feels his body shake as Hinata whispers, “ _ Let me help you. _ ” 

Komaeda will never understand him, for that.

_ “Is this Hinata-san?” _

_ “Yeah. Komaeda’s beside me, right now. I’ll give him the phone.” _

_ “Wonderful to meet you. Hello, Komaeda-san. T-” _

_ “It was March when I first met Enoshima Junko.” _

_ “...” _

_ “I thought she was beautiful. Beautiful like a bird of prey, maybe. Some kind of wild feline. She was vicious and doting, she was passionate and apathetic, she was degrading and praising, she was everything. We never agreed to date. I just became hers. And you could say, then, that she became mine. Bruises became commonplace across my body. I knew a bad glare from a good one. I knew all the ways that footsteps could quietly express what a person will say to you. I knew how to hollow myself out to fit her swell. I know everything. I was perfect.” _

_ “...” _

_ “I was so angry.” _

_ “...” _

_ “One day, she had broken me down so badly that I could hardly think. At least I had been able to move. And I hadn’t slept for days, and I felt this rising resentment, and she kept my nails long because she liked when they scratched her arm when I wanted to leave somewhere and she wouldn’t let me, and she always acted like I was something she had to tame. And she had called me beautiful, this one day, fixing my collar in the courtyard. And suddenly, I was on the ground, I was dizzy, and my teeth were in her neck. When I let go, she was dead.” _

_ “...” _

_ “I ran and ran to a nearby river, and I flung myself into the water hoping I could drown before anybody noticed. But Hinata-kun pulled me out. He drove me home and tucked me into bed. I got out in an hour and started to run away. I didn’t know where I was going, I was wandering around aimlessly for a while, but I found an abandoned house. And I took it.” _

_ “...” _

_ “I killed Enoshima Junko in March, a year after meeting her. I tried to commit suicide in March, thirty minutes after killing Enoshima Junko.” _

_ “...” _

_ “Haha. I’m a fucking monster, aren’t I?” _

_ “...” _

_ “I’m a monster.” _

\--

Hinata rarely burns his wrist.

He knows how to make tea, Komaeda notes.  _ I still have to watch him, but he knows how to make tea.  _ He uses the stove, still, to boil the water, so that Komaeda will drink it. It’s rather considerate of Hinata, to do that.

Komaeda sometimes burns himself, stands too close beside him to make sure Hinata isn’t poisoning it. An accident, he tells himself. Him and Hinata aren’t quite traditional. Nothing about them is, even when they are awfully domestic in this way, Komaeda having a blanket tucked around his shoulders and Hinata gently rubbing his arm with his thumb. It’s soft, perhaps, but untraditional. As to be expected. 

_ If expectations can be untraditional,  _ Komaeda thinks a few seconds later.

The tea tastes just fine. He drinks it all, even when his hands shake, and Hinata watches him do as such. Hinata can be very quiet, almost awkwardly so. Komaeda doesn’t tend to mind. He’s fine with questions, but there’s something about the silence and the understanding that serves as a reprieve. Not a happy ending, not quite, but the end of an era. A rebuilt castle.

They go on a walk, together. Hinata takes him in the car, first, but they walk down a hill, holding hands, until they get to the bottom. The shore of the river. And they are quiet.

Hinata expects Komaeda to say something. His doctor does as well. But Komaeda simply stares for a long, long time. 

And then, he kneels down, running a finger along the water. It doesn’t cut his fingertips. It doesn’t burn his wrist.

“I boil water on a pot over the stove,” he starts to say. The world listens, just this once. “There are quicker ways to make tea, but I prefer it like this. I always acquire a litany of burns, but I don’t quite mind. There are a thousand disadvantages, I’m certain, but I simply like it. It’s how I make tea.”

The water ripples across from him.

“I want to kill myself. I want to kill myself quite often, actually. I haven’t found a solution to that,” he admits. “I’m sorry.”

Hinata throws a pebble into it. It skips once before plummeting.

Is that what it was like, he thinks, when he attempted to drown? Had he skipped a single time? How beautiful is death, when it all is cyclical, centered around her? Every rock is another she stole from his castle. Every rock is another he can’t retrieve. And yet, he may build something new. A different kind of future. He isn’t certain, yet.

Hinata throws another. It skips three times. He lets out a low whistle and sits beside the other. They watch the horizon, together.

“... I’m not certain, yet.” Komaeda breathes-- no clocks, no metronomes. He lets a tear fall down his cheek, dripping into the river. “I may die tomorrow. I don’t really know yet. I don’t really know much of anything.”

He closes his eyes. 

Rain starts to fall. Hinata stands, but Komaeda waits, eyes closed, fingertips tracing the water. Maybe drowning had felt like this, he determines, as his coat gets soaked. A silent, muffling death. The death he stole from her. The death he will never give back.

… And he whispers,

“I’m not yours anymore.”

As the rain falls harder, two shadowed people stand to leave, walking away from the river that almost claimed a life that had stolen another. A river that had faltered for no reason, because maybe there is no reason. Maybe he hadn’t burned to touch.  _ Is this any place for a metaphor? _

The couple stop, shoulders pressed against each other as thunder tears through the sky. One calloused hand finds another, a thought crossing each mind:  _ you were never a monster; I can breathe again.  _ They are silent. 

_ And why is that? _

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this all... essentially today. i have not touched my school work, and there are a plethora of writing commitments i should be working on instead. i'm rather horrid at prioritization, evidently. and thus, we have this. 
> 
> this was... intended to be a directionless vent? it was incredibly cathartic to write, but, well. i determined the end approximately halfway through, and perhaps this shows. 
> 
> ... i don't have much else commentary to put here. i don't really know what this is. it feels really important to me, nonetheless. closure is quite an unconventional thing, and i hope i got that across. i also hope i didn't dig too deep into the metaphors, here. i think my attempt to sound un-pretentious resulted in me... sounding pretentious. oops. 
> 
> let me know what you think, if you are so inclined. until next time.


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